The invention pertains to methods and apparatus for reducing blood viscosity of living beings, and more particularly, to methods and apparatus for the automatic and safe removal of blood from a living being.
The concept of removal of blood from a living being, also known as blood letting, has been known for centuries.
However, the particular physiological benefits of removing blood from a living being, and thereby allowing new blood to be created, has not been appreciated in the medical community. For example, a healthy menstruating female removes xe2x80x9cold bloodxe2x80x9d from her body on a monthly basis that is replenished with xe2x80x9cfresh blood.xe2x80x9d A male, on the other hand, does not experience such a cycle and his circulatory system re-circulates xe2x80x9cold blood.xe2x80x9d
Therefore, there remains a need to provide an individual with the ability to safely and automatically blood let while providing a safe and non-biohazardous way of disposing of the removed blood.
An apparatus for permitting automatic, self-blood letting of a living being of a predetermined amount of blood (e.g., approximately 1 pint) and which renders the removed blood non-biohazardous (e.g., using an internal micro-biological inactivating agent) for safe disposal.
A method of permitting automatic, self-blood letting of a living being of a predetermined amount of blood while rendering the removed blood non-biohazardous for safe disposal. The method comprises: (a) providing a blood collector that normally has an expanded state and which contains a micro-biological inactivating agent (e.g.,bromine, chlorine, Methylene blue (MB) and its derivatives azure A, B, C and thionine); (b) evacuating the blood collector of atmospheric pressure to form a compressed state of the blood collector; (c) coupling a releasable biasing member to the blood collector to maintain the blood collector in the compressed state until a desired time; (d) coupling the blood vessel of the living being to the blood collector; (e) activating the releasable biasing member to cause the blood collector to rapidly expand to draw the predetermined amount of blood into the blood collector; (f) de-coupling the blood collector from the blood vessel; and (g) discarding the blood collector.